So a few months ago I noted a new school magazine blog in Viginia started by first-year teacher George Mayo. The kids have loved it.

Well, guess what? Now there is a podcast to go along with the magazine. And it is FANTASTIC! How cool is that? This is the kind of constructivist, shared learning experience that the Read/Write Web makes possible. George says that it’s “amazing to be able to have a relatively high quality radio show so easily. Endless possibilities here.” Amen.

If we can have the world’s youngest video blogger, then we can sure as heck have the world’s youngest podcasting class. Let’s spread that meme, eh?

I’m constantly amazed at the move toward “social” software on the Internet, not so much because it’s happening (people by nature, I think, like to connect) but in the creative ways it’s happening. Not only can you connect with the people, you can connect with their ideas, like with Furl and del.icio.us. The newest example is 43 Things, a site that at first blush seems a bit silly, but once you dig a little deeper, has a really intruiging premise.

It’s simple; you put in 43 Things (or 5, or 23, or 12) that you want to accomplish and if anyone else has put any of those goals, you get linked up with them. For instance, I want to learn how to play guitar. Well, there are 11 other people at 43 Things that share that goal, and now, if we like, lilevil, and shira and bjorn and the rest could pursue that goal together by posting or blogging about our experience and commenting back and forth to one another about it. There are even RSS feeds that let you keep up with everything from your aggregator. Life is wonderful, isn’t it?

Right now, the top goals are “taking more pictures”, “stop procrastinating” and learn Ruby. (What made me think one of them would be something like “save the world from utter destruction?”) At number four is “be a better blogger”, something I know we all aspire to ;0).

So what? Well, I’m thinking wouldn’t it be cool to hook students with similar goals or assignments up in a similar fashion? Like a site that could create communities of students who were all doing fetal pig dissections or reading the same novel? They could share experiences, techniques, interpretations… Now I know there would be a lot of safety and security issues to think through. But this is an interesting model of what we can do these days, connect learners, achievers, goal setters, whatever group you want from around the world to work toward a common end.

Personally, I’m heading to the live simply group. My life is waaaayyy to complicated…

From WFMU near New York City:

  Seven Second Delay with Ken and Andy (official page with archives)–Ken and Andy further lower WFMU’s already abysmal standards as the program enters its death throes. Stunt radio which subjects the radio audience to concepts and topics which mature adults should not have to endure. Find the fatal flaw.

And:

  Jonesville Station (official page with archives)–An hour of life with Glen Jones. Talk about things that need talking about. Rants about things that could use a good rant. Conversation with folks worth conversing with.

Here’s the complete list with iPod instructions and everything.

I know I feel better now about where this is all heading…

So having said last week that I was pretty much done with the podcasting stuff, here I am, back with what I guess is Podcast #3. But, this one is a bit different.

After listening recently to an NPR audio-essay on Brian Eno I thought “now there’s an application for Podcasts” or something close to that. See, to me the power in this has always been about the audience, the ability to distribute the creation to people in the hopes they’ll listen. The Eno essayist had NPR. We, thanks to Podcasting, have the Internet.

So, I carved out a few hours, wrote up an essay, fired up Audacity, and tried to pay Podcasting hommage to one of my favorite musicians, Todd Rundgren, who came out with a new CD last year that really floored me. After a short intro, this is the result. (There’s about 20 seconds between the intro and the actual project, by the way.)

This is by no means perfection, in fact at times it gut-wrenchingly embarrasing. (The grand irony comes with what Todd sings at the end right after I sign off. Nails it.) There are lots of ps popping, and keep your finger on your iPod volume as the levels leave something to be desired. But for the most part, this is the kind of thing I see Podcasting being used for in the classroom. Of course, the big test is if Alan can stay awake…

Talk about mixed emotions…a seemingly great list of 13 blogging articles from Lore: An E-Journal for Teachers of Writing with no time to read them all.

In the past few years, blogging has become something of a national pastime, and academics are becoming a core group using blogs for personal and professional reasons. Yet even though many people embrace blogging, many others have no idea what it is or why anyone would do it. In this issue of Lore, we explore the role that blogging plays for academics both in and out of the classroom.

The solution? Well, we could split it up…any takers? But if not, here is the Weblogg-ed solution for getting the gist of what’s there…the last few sentences from each essay. Click on the number to see the whole thing.

1. “And my answer is that all this talk about not wanting people to know your private self is concealing not only a desire to be seen and known precisely as a person in private life but also a desire to re-imagine the possibility of one’s own status as a discrete subject – a dream or hope that we might still think of ourselves as coherent persons with a private subjectivity to protect. But me, I would rather revel in my incoherence and play with and as myself in the blogosphere.

2. I had not expected this kind of dialogue when I started my blog, but I am pleased to have it. I think blogging is making me a better teacher, and it may make me a better writer and scholar as well. I can only hope it is also helping my students to achieve their own goals, in the composition class and elsewhere.

3. One of the pleasures of blogging is that you never know how things will develop. Maybe the blog will take off as an educational tool for my students. Maybe even others will benefit from it. Or maybe the interest will be low. It’ll be fun finding out.

4. Race, gender, sexual orientation, and class become both highlighted and hidden within knitting blogs. By this I mean that bloggers may move across subjectivities within their blog, one day emphasizing their difference, another day emphasizing their sameness. The fluidity of the presentation, not marked by the physical presence of a person, allows a different and more inclusive community.

5. Of course, my blog contains many entries that are not about my academic work. What regular reader can forget my scintillating accounts of backing up my computer or trying to fix the broken toilet? Sometimes I do bring those moments into the classroom, usually in the before-class banter of what happened last weekend. Furthermore, much of that mundane stuff is in here because there are multiple audiences for this, including friends I’ve had for decades who also blog. No one in my family blogs, as far as I know, but that could change any day now.

6. Progressive educational philosophy emphasizes empowering the student. A Web log forces students to come into contact with that outside world a little earlier, which can be a burden. But with that responsibility comes power. I’d rather the university president not think of me as the bane of her existence because of my blog. At the same time, this sad bird enjoys being noticed.

7. While blogs are by no means immune from the purely antagonistic behavior such as “trolling,” bloggers have – and frequently do take – the opportunity to gain insight into one another’s private worlds. Among those who appreciate this opportunity there exists a sense of camaraderie. One of the traditions among my peers is the post that introduces to the online readership a real-life friend who has been persuaded to start a blog. In other words, the epidemic is spreading.

8. I have included a blogging component to my course, and I am excited to see what happens. I have modified the assignment and changed some expectations with the “it-doesn’t-take-a-genius” view that, no, students do not have to like assignments to be benefited by them, but that, yes, it does help if students like what they are doing. I am hoping to sidestep a confrontation with the “Is it fair to continue?” question by finding that they enjoy the blogging component as much as I do. Check out my current teaching blog to find out if my ideological hot air balloon has deflated or if it continues to soar.

9. Blogs critical of the treatment of adjunct faculty such as Invisible Adjunct remind us that blogging need not keep us from being aware of our status in the university. But Invisible Adjunct has recently closed down, not because the status of adjuncts has improved or the author was able to secure a tenure-track job, but because the author has decided to leave the academy for good. For those of us on the bottom of academic hierarchies, blogging may be a luxury we cannot afford.

10. While I don’t know if any of my students will become avid bloggers like myself, I do believe they’ve benefited immensely from constantly putting their ideas into the (at least theoretically) public sphere. Just as I’ve learned much about my own dreams and goals by going public with my thoughts and arguments on sustainability, I hope that my students will recognize the joy of interaction provided in both the theater and the blogosphere.

11. While blogging will not and should not replace traditional academic articles and monographs, it does provide opportunities for peer review, dialogue, community building, and collaborative authorship, both in research and in teaching, and I think academic Web logs have helped spur the move toward open-access, interactive scholarship.

12. Our class experiment has been limited by the absolute lack of technology in the classroom; however, the students are still quickly learning about blogging and becoming acclimated to greater use of computers and the Web, albeit with some resistance. Our blogging experiment will continue throughout this semester and likely throughout our professional careers. While this experiment is incomplete, the class has already exceeded our expectations because of the speed with which the students have become comfortable with and inquisitive about both blogging and digital technology.

13. Despite a few temporary technical glitches, my experience with using blogs to teach writing has been very positive. It is too early to tell whether writing produced online, rather than slipped discreetly under the writing teacher’s office door, is truly of a higher standard. However, it is usually a lot more fun for the students to produce and for the teacher to read. I hope that institutions that teach writing will come to recognize the Web log as a valid form of instruction and alternative assessment because it is basically the writing portfolio digitally remastered.
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Last night I added a 30-second message to the start of one of my seven-year-old daughter’s favorite songs, loaded in on my iPod, and “surprised” her with it when I got home. It was easy. It was fast. It was fun.

Sometimes I really marvel at how fun this all is. It’s fun to:

The December issue of District Administration magazine has a short piece on wikis and mentions a couple of K-12 rumblings including Tim’s use of wikis at Lewis Elementary. (BTW, Tim redesigned his personal site at some point and it looks great…one of the drawbacks of RSS feeds.)

This month, they feature Podcasting.

Podcasting is so new that educators and students are essentially writing the book on bringing the technology to teaching and learning. Current applications range from placing audio updates from administrators on district Web sites, recording class presentations for later review, uploading interviews of community leaders and producing online school radio broadcasts. Duke University distributed iPods with school-related information and instructional content to all of its first-year students this year, and similar applications are being discussed at K-12 levels, too. Podcasts are popping up everywhere.

There are growing numbers of online examples of podcasts in schools and resources for getting started, including those listed below. Several online directories are also available, such as Podcast.net, to bring significant programs to the attention of your staff and students. However, keep in mind the content of podcasts is unregulated, which is both refreshing and alarming. It is essential to supervise and establish policies for its use in schools. Podcasting didn’t even exist five months ago, and it is already pioneering powerful new forms of online communications that you need to explore.

Unfortunately, the links at the bottom don’t give specific examples of the ideas mentioned. But hey, maybe some administrators will start learning the lingo at least…
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I’ve gotten two e-mails in the last two days from educators who are doing what I think are great things in the classroom with blogs. (I love it when that happens…)

At Warren Consolidated Schools in Michigan, they used Weblogs to connect students from 20 different schools to collaborate in an “Authors in Autumn” project where they created an interactive story:

The interactive story is designed to allow students to add paragraphs to the main story in “Real-Time”. As soon as they type out their part of the story and click submit, their portion of the story is instantly added to the main story. Participating Media Specialists will help coordinate and facilitate the use of the technology as students work to create a truly unique story with many twists and turns. We hope you are as excited as we are to see how the story develops. This is truly an exciting and fun activity for the students which promotes collaboration among staff, students, and schools.

Chris Kenniburg writes that the blog had an effect:

With instant results and the participation of many schools in the district, students were eager to learn about story writing techniques. This new use of technology was exciting and easy for the students and adds a new twist to how blog technology can be used by teachers in a learning environment.

They are going to follow it up with a live distance learning event between a number of schools and the authors. The links to the stories are slow, but they do show up eventually

The second example is from Bill Deneen at Mt. Holyoke College. Get this:

We have a group of students and a professor going on a tall ship, the HMS Bounty, for a 2-week course in sailing and seamanship. As part of the course, students will write about their experiences as they happen, posting to a blog via satellite phone. It’s a meeting of 19th century transportation and 21st century communications, all in the name of education.

Ok, first of all, where do I sign up? Second of all, is that cool or what? Connecting, collaborating, communicating, constructing…lots of learning on the high C’s. I know, bad joke. But stuff like this really makes it clear that we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface…
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Latest Pew Internet and American Life Project survey results:

Three short little kid blogging tales to start off the New Year right:

1. ABC News named bloggers the “People of the Year,” and in the story, it mentions the “world’s youngest videoblogger”, 11-year old Dylan Verdi. I don’t know if you’ve seen Dylan’s video, but it’s a light-hearted, random look at her life, and, as can happen these days on the Internet, the blogosphere spread it like wildfire landing her on the evening news. Her father is hosting the video at the Internet Archive now since his bandwidth costs went sky high. His account of the events is simply great as well. In the article, here’s what she says about the experience so far:

“On my blog it allows people to post comments, and I have gotten comment upon comment upon comment,” she said. “It makes me feel really good that somebody else cares about what I have to say.”

One of those comments was left by my seven-year old daughter, who,…

2. …after we watched the video, asked “how did she do that?” with real interest. We’re talking about her doing a movie on her own now. Cool. Even better, though, was a random comment that she got on her own blog from two girls who are reading her posts:

Hello. My name is Amy, and my friend Hannah and I were reading your weblog. We like it very much. You write very funny stories! Please write more, we would like to read them.

One of her New Year’s Resolutions is to post at least a story a week, and last night I sat with her as she blogged her latest 200+ word post (with apologies to Garfield, I know.) At one point she turned to me and said, “you know daddy, my teacher doesn’t even know I have a blog yet. I’m going to tell her tomorrow.” I know she’d love to get some feedback…

3. Finally, I was just surfing through some of the student blogs we have here at my school and came across this post:

It’s Sunday, and I just worked a full weekend, and I am exhausted- but I have to tell you (if you are reading this) I love spending time, writing stuff on this weblog- whether it’s posting pictures or my blogs/beats.

Jordana’s obviously got that audience thing figured out, and it’s working for her. I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but I’ll say it again…kids never got a chance to write the way she’s writing BB (before blogs). And even though many won’t take to it like she has, I think it’s important to give students that taste of audience and voice anyway.

I used to coach with a guy who always told players to “take a picture” when things were going right. There are lots of these pictures out there, and this is what the Read/Write Web has in store. It’s no secret that I am still awed by the prospects.
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This comment left by Anne Blocker, Director of the National Learning Laboratory is a great example of what’s great about Weblogs. Considering it was the absolute first thing I read online in 2005, it hopefully augers a great blog year upcoming.

Her comment has left me thinking a great deal about how technology offers different value to different learners. I’m such a visual learner that perhaps the iPod may not be a tool I use often. But for Anne, obviously, the iPod plays a very important role in how she learns. And as an instructional technology supervisor, I appreciate the reminder. Her process is such an eye-opener to me, and it’s got me looking for a way to replicate it in Windows. WireTap Pro looks like an amazing program, but because it’s MAC only, it’s one I can’t use, and neither can my students. I’m also thinking about her statement that “slow students need everything faster.” There is obviously a lot I have to learn.

It’s interactions like these that make me such a blogvangelist. Like Anne, I can’t imagine my life without the constant learning opportunities that these tools offer.

Here’s to a great year!